


Lacy Pancakes

by almostafantasia



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F, Great British Bake Off - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-26
Updated: 2016-10-26
Packaged: 2018-08-27 01:12:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8382166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/almostafantasia/pseuds/almostafantasia
Summary: In which Lexa doesn't understand the obsession that everybody seems to have with this dumb British cooking show. Until suddenly she does.





	

**Author's Note:**

> A Clexa fanfic written in anticipation of tomorrow night's GBBO final, because I somehow managed to find a way to combine two of the things that I am complete trash for.

There is nothing in the world that could be important enough for Clarke to tear her eyes away from the screen of her laptop. Not the shrill screech of the fire alarm demanding an urgent departure from her apartment, nor the chilling scratch of a horde of zombies clamouring at her door would be enough. Clarke is fairly certain that even if her girlfriend were to be standing on the other side of the room, eyes dark and seductively beckoning, without a shred of clothing on her body, there’s still a fifty percent chance that Clarke would decide that anxiously waiting to find out which of the nine British strangers on her screen has made the best lacy pancake is a better use of her time than sex.

Clarke didn’t even realise that a pancake could be lacy until a few minutes ago.

Eyes wide and fixated on the screen as one of the bakers pours their mixture into the trash can (the _bin_ , Clarke reminds herself) and announces that they will be starting again, it vaguely registers in the back of Clarke’s mind that she feels the accompanying vibration as the front door of her apartment slams shut, then the weight of a body leaning over the back of the couch, which is then quickly followed by a hand brushing her hair aside and a warm pair of lips brushing against the newly exposed skin of her neck.

And still, as the plucked string soundtrack ramps up the tension and the adorable British lesbian in a blazer makes yet another pun that has Clarke chuckling softly to herself, this quaint little baking show is a worthier winner of Clarke’s undivided attention than the girlfriend newly home from work.

That is until, with a surprise that is both as unexpected and unpleasant as having an ice cold bucket of water emptied over her head would be, the headphones are plucked right off her head from behind.

“What the hell, Lexa?” Clarke yells in outrage, scrambling frantically to click the pause button before she misses any of the action. “I’m watching this!”

With Clarke’s headphones still in her hands, Lexa walks around to the front of the couch and drops onto the cushions beside her girlfriend, cuddling into Clarke’s side like a kitten desperate for attention.

“I’ve been in meetings all day,” Lexa mumbles softly, leaning her head on Clarke’s shoulder and nuzzling her face into Clarke’s neck. “I missed you.”

“I missed you too, but can you give me, like –“ Clarke pauses and swiftly manoeuvres her fingers across the trackpad on her laptop until the cursor hovers over the play button, revealing the remaining time left of this episode, “– twenty more minutes to finish this episode?”

Lifting her head, Lexa squints at the screen, and then asks, “Isn’t this that dumb English cooking show?”

“ _The Great British Bake Off_ ,” Clarke corrects Lexa, her shoulders stiffening slightly. “Babe, this is _art_.”

Seemingly ignoring Clarke, Lexa’s frown intensifies and she points at the ornate heart-shaped pancake on the paused screen.

“And what the hell is _that_?”

“It’s a lacy pancake,” answers Clarke.

Lexa snorts.

“That is not a pancake!”

“It’s a _lacy_ pancake,” Clarke repeats indignantly.

“There’s nothing to it!” Lexa complains loudly. She takes a deep breath and Clarke braces herself for the rant that she knows is about to come. “You know, the problem with the British is that they just don’t know how to make proper food.”

Clarke lets out and impatient sigh and folds her arms across her chest.

“Lexa, you can’t make nonsensical judgements about an entire nation based on a single TV show that you’ve never even watched!”

“Let me repeat,” Lexa insists, “that is _not_ a pancake.”

“And I’m just going to ignore how wrong you are and finish watching this.” Clarke extracts her headphones from Lexa’s grasp and starts to lift then back up to her head, but upon seeing Lexa’s disgruntled frown, she gives Lexa’s fingers a quick squeeze and then continues, “Give me twenty minutes to finish up and then I’m all yours.”

She lowers her voice for the last bit, and maybe she isn’t playing fair because Lexa has told her time and time again, sometimes in beautifully explicit detail, exactly what that voice does to her. It works though, and that’s all that matter as Lexa gets to her feet with only the smallest of complaints, slipping her arms out of her suit jacket as she traipses out of the room.

And then, as she moves her headphones back into place and clicks the play button on the screen, Lexa is forgotten as Clarke is transported four thousand miles across and ocean to a tent in the middle of the British countryside.

* * *

When Clarke arrives home, a heavy bag of groceries in her hand, she finds Lexa at the stove in the kitchen, work shirt untucked and sleeves rolled up to the elbows. Music plays from the speakers of the phone on the counter, some classical symphony that Clarke isn’t familiar with but Lexa must be, judging by the way that she hums along and nods her head in time with the music.

“Hey.”

Lexa’s head jerks up when she hears Clarke enter the kitchen, and she drops the spatula that she’s been using to stir the pan on the stove to turn her attention to her girlfriend.

“Hey yourself,” she replies, wrapping her arms around Clarke’s waist and pressing a lingering kiss to Clarke’s lips. “I’m cooking dinner.”

“I noticed,” Clarke nods. “What happened? You usually just order take out.”

“Well,” answers Lexa, raising a single eyebrow at Clarke, “I wanted to make an effort, just for you.”

“Aw, babe,” Clarke says fondly, placing her grocery bag down on the floor beside her feet, then draping her arms around Lexa’s neck.

“I thought we could crack open a bottle of wine, maybe light a few candles…” When Clarke’s eyes flick across to the three candles already lit on the centre counter, Lexa corrects herself, “Okay, light a few _more_ candles, and then we can have a nice romantic dinner before watching a movie in bed.”

Lexa’s hands drop slightly from Clarke’s waist to the curve of her hips and Clarke knows that Lexa’s intentions for after dinner have absolutely nothing to do with watching a movie.

“Lexa, I’d love to, and I love all the effort you’re putting in, but I can’t really make a night of it,” Clarke answers. Her own disappointment mirrored on Lexa’s face, Clarke is quick to continue, “I mean, I can stay for dinner. It smells _lovely_ , by the way, but I’m supposed to be going over to Octavia’s tonight. And didn’t you agree to meet up with Anya?”

Lexa drops her head so that her forehead is resting on Clarke’s shoulder and lets out a long groan into Clarke’s hair.

“Anya is _boring_. I can’t make out with Anya.” Lexa pauses, then lifts her head to add thoughtfully, “Well, I _could_ make out with Anya, but she would punch me.”

“As would I,” Clarke teases, which earns her a scowl from the girl in her arms. “Listen, I can’t bail on the girls tonight. We’re going to watch _The Great British Bake Off_ and…”

“Didn’t you just watch that the other day?” Lexa interjects with a frown.

Rolling her eyes, Clarke answers, “You see, the thing about television is that there are these things called _episodes_ and they usually happen every week…”

“Asshole,” Lexa mutters under her breath. “And why didn’t I get invited to your girls night?”

Clarke snorts under her breath, and then replies, “You don’t like _Bake Off_. Lexa, I love you, but I’m not prepared have another pancake conversation with you.”

“They were _not_ pancakes.”

Clarke silences Lexa with a kiss before they can get into a heated argument about what does or does not constitute a pancake, an argument that they’ve had a surprising number of times in the last few days.

“Babe, go and have a couple of drinks with Anya after dinner. And,” Clarke lowers her voice and lifts one of her hands up to caress the soft skin of Lexa’s cheek, “apparently Raven has found a drinking game for us to play while we watch the show. If you’re really lucky, I might come home drunk enough to let you do some really bad things to me. How does that sound?”

Lexa swallows visibly, her green eyes widening slightly, and just imagining what kind of wild thoughts might be going through her girlfriend’s mind right now is almost enough for Clarke to call Octavia and cancel the girls’ night.

Pushing herself up onto her tiptoes, Clarke presses a kiss that is full of promises to Lexa’s slightly parted lips.

“Come on,” she says, disentangling herself from Lexa’s arms. “Let’s finish this dinner together and you can tell me all about your day.”

* * *

Clarke notices the first sign that Lexa might be more into _The Great British Bake Off_ than she lets on, but she doesn’t pick up on what it means.

It comes in the form of a single sheet of paper left lying out on one of the kitchen counters, upon which Clarke finds a printed recipe for a lemon drizzle cake.

“What’s this?” she casually asks Lexa a few minutes later.

“Oh, that?” Lexa answers, dismissing it with a wave of her hand. “Your mom’s birthday is coming up next week. I thought we could bake a cake for her. She likes lemon, right?”

Clarke crosses the kitchen and rewards Lexa with a kiss, parting her lips ever so slightly and adding just the tiniest hint of tongue, before she pulls back.

“That’s a really sweet idea,” Clarke smiles at Lexa. “She’ll love that.”

* * *

The second discovery is about as subtle as being hit in the face with a baseball bat.

It happens completely by accident – Clarke doesn’t _intend_ to pry, but there’s been something wrong with her laptop charger for a while and of _course_ it decides to give up completely on a Saturday evening, meaning that he still has to wait until Monday at the very earliest for the new one she’s ordered online to be delivered to her apartment.

But it’s now Sunday afternoon and Lexa is out on their balcony taking an important work call, leaving Clarke both a little bit bored and with Lexa’s unattended laptop left open on the cushions at one end of the couch, and it’s been eighteen hours since she had access to the internet on anything other than the small screen of her smart phone…

The laptop is off the couch and sitting on Clarke’s knees before she can even blink, and her fingers dance nimbly across the keys, tapping in Lexa’s password to unlock the screen.

It’s there on the screen as soon as she unlocks it, a browser window left open on a paused torrent of a television show that Clarke recognises instantly from the two familiar women standing outside a huge white tent in the middle of the field.

Clarke wonders for a moment whether she’s picked up the right laptop, whether maybe this belongs to her and that Lexa’s is the one with a broken cable, because there is absolutely no way in hell that Lexa would be secretly watching this. It’s enough for Clarke to question her very existence, for her brain to feel like it’s been inverted inside her head because none of this makes sense at all. She blinks once, slowly enough to keep her eyes screwed shut for just longer than a second, then opens then again tentatively, half expecting the image on the screen to have changed to prove that she’s just imagining it.

But it doesn’t.

“Sorry about that,” says Lexa, re-entering their apartment through the sliding door from the balcony, oblivious to the whirlwind of surprise that has just torn through Clarke’s mind.

“Babe, what’s this?” Clarke asks, still completely dumbfounded by her discovery on Lexa’s laptop.

Lexa drops onto the couch beside Clarke with a soft thud and leans across to take a look at the screen.

Clarke hears the words get caught at the back of Lexa’s throat, a soft choking sound that finally draws Clarke’s eyes away from the computer screen to look at her girlfriend.

“It’s…” Lexa stumbles over her words, and Clarke is pretty certain that she hasn’t seen Lexa this jumpy since their first date almost two years ago. “I … well, you seem to like this show so much that I thought I’d give it a try.”

It would perhaps be quite a sweet answer, despite Lexa’s difficulty to get the words out in a coherent manner, and Clarke is actually briefly endeared to the fact that Lexa is trying out this show as a way of getting to know Clarke better. Endeared for a total of about half a second, because then she notices the episode title in small print beneath the paused window, and it is like another, almost as monstrous tidal wave of surprise hits her in full force.

“Series _three_?” she splutters. “What happened to the first two seasons?”

Embarrassed, Lexa’s eyes drop to her knees and she fidgets with her hands in her lap as she answers meekly, “I watched them.” When Clarke says nothing, merely gaping at her in shock, Lexa adds, “Okay, so the show’s actually really good. I got hooked and couldn’t stop watching it.”

“You binge-watched two and a half seasons of something that you called a ‘ _dumb cooking show_ ’ just a couple of weeks ago?” Clarke asks, stuck somewhere between astonishment and laughter that ends up sending her mind on a high-speed rollercoaster of confusion that she doesn’t really know how to deal with.

Folding her arms across her chest and knitting her eyebrows together, Lexa makes feeble attempts at trying to explain her way out of the situation.

“It’s not … it’s _different_ to the cooking shows you get over here, okay?” she pouts across at Clarke. Fumbling for better justification, Lexa quickly adds, “They _help_ each other when something goes wrong. It’s cute!”

“Babe, you don’t need to defend the show,” Clarke laughs softly under her breath and reaches across to take one of Lexa’s hands in her own, giving it a reassuring squeeze between her fingers to let her know that she’s not really serious about the way she’s mocking Lexa’s newest television habits. “I’m already a fan, I’m just amused that you’ve even given it a chance, let alone become such a superfan.”

“I’m not a superfan!” Lexa is quick to protest.

“Season _three_ , Lex,” Clarke teases. “You’re basically like, hardcore addicted to this show.”

The elbow she gets in the ribs is _definitely_ worth it.

* * *

The party is actually Lexa’s idea, not that she would ever admit that to anybody other than Clarke, and even then, she spends so much time arguing that it’s a joint endeavour that Clarke almost believes it herself.

And so, after several hours of avoiding spoilers from across the pond and using a streaming system though the large flat screen television that hangs on the wall of their living room that is probably all kinds of illegal, they find themselves surrounded by friends and ready to watch something that up until a few weeks ago, Clarke would have sworn that Lexa would never show an interest in.

She even helped decorate the apartment, for fuck’s sake.

There’s all sorts of delicious baked goods laid out across the coffee table – mostly shop-bought, but Clarke’s hardly going to complain about the origin of chocolate cake – and every other available surface is adorned with British inspired decorations; paper plates, serviettes, and even plastic cups ready for the planned drinking game, all in red, white and blue, and they even managed to find string pennants emblazoned with British flags to hang across each wall.

A few weeks ago, Lexa would have tirelessly protested at the mere thought of throwing such a gathering with their friends to watch the final of this show, instead of playing an active role in its organisation.

Relaxing into Lexa’s body beside her on the couch as the familiar charming music starts up with the opening titles, Clarke rests a hand on Lexa's thigh and leans across to whisper into her girlfriend’s ear, “And to think, this all started with a lacy pancake.”

Lexa’s response is as predictable as it is indignant.

“How can you possibly think that was a pancake?”

Some things will never change.


End file.
